KARL MARX Peter Harrington london Peter Harrington london mayfair chelsea Peter Harrington Peter Harrington 43 dover street 100 FulHam road london w1s 4FF london sw3 6Hs uk 020 3763 3220 uk 020 7591 0220 eu 00 44 20 3763 3220 eu 00 44 20 7591 0220 usa 011 44 20 3763 3220 www.peterharrington.co.uk usa 011 44 20 7591 0220 Peter Harrington london KARL MARX remarkable First editions, Presentation coPies, and autograPH researcH notes ian smitH, senior sPecialist in economics, Politics and PHilosoPHy [email protected] Marx: then and now We present a remarkable assembly of first editions and presentation copies of the works of “The history of the twentieth Karl Marx (1818–1883), including groundbreaking books composed in collaboration with century is Marx’s legacy. Stalin, Mao, Che, Castro … have all Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), early articles and announcements written for the journals presented themselves as his heirs. Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher and Der Vorbote, and scathing critical responses to the views of Whether he would recognise his contemporaries Bauer, Proudhon, and Vogt. them as such is quite another matter … Nevertheless, within one Among this selection of highlights are inscribed copies of Das Kapital (Capital) and hundred years of his death half Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (Communist Manifesto), the latter being the only copy of the the world’s population was ruled Manifesto inscribed by Marx known to scholarship; an autograph manuscript leaf from his by governments that professed Marxism to be their guiding faith. years spent researching his theory of capital at the British Museum; a first edition of the His ideas have transformed the study account of the First International’s 1866 Geneva congress which published Marx’s eleven of economics, history, geography, “instructions”; and translations of his works into Russian, Italian, Spanish, and English, sociology and literature.” which begin to show the impact that his revolutionary ideas had both before and shortly (Francis Wheen, Karl Marx, 1999) after his death. 2 karl marx | peter harrington 3 „Das Opium des Volks“ The Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher is the publication which brought Marx and Engels together, leading to a lifetime of fruitful collaboration and warm friendship. The two men had met once before, when Engels visited the office of the radical Rheinische Zeitung in 1842, of which Marx had been appointed editor just one month prior. Marx, mistakenly believing that Engels was associated with the Berliner Young Hegelians, received him coolly, and they parted somewhat distrustful of one another. When the Rheinische Zeitung was forced to close in March 1843 under the weight of state censorship, Marx and his fellow editor Arnold Ruge decided to produce the Jahrbücher as a way of reuniting German and French socialists. Engels was among the impressive list of contributors, alongside Mikhail Bakunin, Ludwig Feuerbach, and Heinrich Heine. The very rare first and only issue contains the first appearance of both Marx’s first major work, Zur Kritik der Hegel’schen Rechtsphilosophie (including his famous remark that religion is “das Opium des Volks”), and Engels’s first work on economics, Umrisse zu einer Kritik der Nationalökonomie, which was to have an immense impact on Marx’s subsequent writings. Around 1,000 copies were printed, but 800 were soon confiscated by German police. Having come to respect each others’ work, Marx and Engels met for the second time at the end of August 1844 in Paris, and their almost complete agreement in all theoretical fields concretised their friendship. 4 karl marx | peter harrington 1 MARX, Karl, & Arnold Ruge (editors & con- tributors). Deutsch-Französische Jahrbüch- er … 1ste und 2te Leiferung [double number, all published]. Paris: Bureau der Jahrbücher, 1844 5 The foundations of historical materialism The second meeting of Marx and Engels in August 1844 was also the beginning of their first collaboration, a critique of their former associates of the Young Hegelian school whose views were still very popular in academic circles. Taking Kritik der kritischen Kritik (Critique of Critical Criticism) as a working title, they agreed to co-author the foreword, and divided up the other sections between them. Engels completed his portion of 20 pages while still at Marx’s apartment in Paris, but it was several months before he would realise that the agreed-upon pamphlet had, under Marx’s pen, grown to more than 300 pages and had been renamed Die heilige Familie (The Holy Family), a sarcastic reference to the Bauer brothers and their supporters. “Considered as the production of young men, the book is a remarkable piece of critical work, alike by reason of its brilliant style and the great learning it displays … The importance of the work for us lies in the evidence it affords of the development of the theory of historical materialism in the mind of Marx. In place of the brief and almost vague hints which appeared in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher articles, there is a more positive and emphatic tone.” (John Spargo, Karl Marx: His Life and Work) 6 karl marx | peter harrington 2 MARX, Karl, & Friedrich Engels. Die heilige Familie, oder Kritik der kritischen Kritik. Gegen Bruno Bauer & Consorten. Frankfurt: Literarische Anstalt ( J. Rütten), 1845 7 Against Proudhon In 1846 the French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon published his chief work, Système des contradictions économiques ou philosophie de la misère. Though Marx had previously been on amicable terms with Proudhon—he had defended Proudhon’s denunciation of private property in Die heilige Familie—he violently opposed the economic message of Philosophie de la misère and immediately began composing a response. Isaiah Berlin called the result, Misère de la philosophie, issued in a small edition of 800 copies, “the bitterest attack delivered by one thinker upon another since the celebrated polemics of the Renaissance”. A masterpiece of critical writing, it is bitingly satirical in its trivialization of Proudhon’s theories and quickly created a sensation in radical circles. Perhaps most significantly, it furthered the development of Marx’s materialistic conception of history, namely that history must be interpreted in the light of economic development. 8 karl marx | peter harrington 3 MARX, Karl. Misère de la philosophie. Réponse à la philosophie de la misère de M. Proudhon. Paris & Brussels: A. Frank and C. G. Vogler, 1847 9 The only known copy of the Communist Manifesto inscribed by Marx The Communist Manifesto is widely acknowledged to be one of the most influential political documents of all time. Its sharp analysis, moral passion, and stylistic eloquence presented communism as the necessary and inevitable product of the historical development of capitalism. Few texts have been reprinted so many times or translated into so many languages. Commissioned by the Communist League’s second congress in December 1847, the Manifesto was completed the following January and published in London, fittingly just before the beginning of the French and German revolutions of 1848. The Hirschfeld edition is often styled “the third ‘first’ edition”, with precedence given to the two other editions dated 1848, both printed in London by Burghard. Census records for the printer and mentions of the edition’s production in Marx’s correspondence suggest that the Hirschfeld edition was in fact printed during the early 1860s, around the same time that Hirschfeld was printing Herr Vogt for the German publisher Alfred Petsch. All three editions are very rare. This is an exceptional presentation copy of the Communist Manifesto, inscribed to the French revolutionist and the Marx family’s close friend Gustave Flourens, “À mon ami Gustave Flourens. Karl Marx. Londres, 1. Mai. 1870”. It remains the only known copy of the Manifesto to be inscribed by Marx. The only other presentation copy known to scholarship is that inscribed by Engels to Alfred Herman, the Belgian socialist. Flourens (1838–1871), though a naturalist and biologist by profession, distinguished himself foremost as a revolutionary through his participation in a number of uprisings 10 karl marx | peter harrington across Europe during the 1860s and 70s, before being elected to the Paris Commune. During his visits to the Marx family in London in April 1870 he became a close personal friend, and was admired by them for his integrity and passion. 4 [MARX, Karl, & Friedrich Engels.] Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei. Veröffentlicht im Februar 1848. London: R. Hirschfeld, 1848 [but 1860–1] 11 Marx’s research on banking and stockbroking The incendiary nature of the Communist Manifesto resulted in Marx’s expulsion, in quick succession, from Belgium, Germany, and France, and he arrived in London from Paris in August 1849. As he struggled to come to terms with the Revolution of 1848 and experienced increasingly strained relations with his associates, he spent considerable time in the British Museum, studying in depth source materials in an attempt to establish and explain a world theory of capital. In this, the 20th leaf from the second of 24 notebooks that he filled between 1850 and 1858, he transcribes extracts from J. W. Gilbart’s A Practical Treatise on Banking in his almost indecipherable hand, combining English transcription with German commentary: “Der stockbroker, too, will call ‘after the market is open’, to inform the banker ‘how things are going’ on the Stock Exchange, welche Operationen Statthaben, und ob Geld abundant oder scarce ‘in the house’ ist, ebenso die rumours ‘afloat betreffend die funds’…” 12 karl marx | peter harrington 5 MARX, Karl. Autograph manuscript leaf of notes, part of his research notes made in the British Museum prior to his authorship of Das Kapital. [No place, but London: c.1850] 13 The “germ” of Das Kapital Nine years into his research in the British Museum, Marx published Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, his first attempt at a general statement of his economic theories and his treatment of the history of value and monetary theory.